Legislative Goals for 2015

If you’re like me and you stopped using mar­i­jua­na 24 years ago (I’ll admit not very peo­ple are like me), then you’d prob­a­bly like to see some progress being made on reform­ing the image and rep­u­ta­tion of mar­i­jua­na (slan­dered and vil­i­fied in a smear cam­paign best known as “Reefer Mad­ness”) in Iowa. And, if you’re like me, you saw the issue of cannabis extract get­ting seri­ous atten­tion from leg­is­la­tors across the coun­ty this year. Eleven states, includ­ing Iowa, enact­ed cannabis extract laws this year. So, here’s a list of stuff I’d like to see in 2015.

An absolute must in 2015 is reclas­si­fy­ing mar­i­jua­na in Iowa. Clas­si­fy­ing mar­i­jua­na as a plant with no med­ical val­ue makes no sense now that Iowa rec­og­nizes the med­ical val­ue this plant has. The Iowa Board of Phar­ma­cy rec­om­mend­ed reclas­si­fy­ing mar­i­jua­na in 2010 and is going to do it again toward the end of this year in Novem­ber of 2014. A leg­isla­tive study com­mit­tee of ten leg­is­la­tors vot­ed nine to one to rec­om­mend reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of mar­i­jua­na in Sep­tem­ber of 2014. This is the bot­tom line and it’s essen­tial that mar­i­jua­na is reclas­si­fied here in Iowa in 2015.

Anoth­er rec­om­men­da­tion from the leg­isla­tive study com­mit­tee is cul­ti­vat­ing the mar­i­jua­na for the cannabis extract here in Iowa. Six of the ten leg­is­la­tors on the study com­mit­tee vot­ed to grow the cannabis in Iowa and the gov­er­nor said he is open to it. Fed­er­al law was actu­al­ly amend­ed ear­li­er this year to allow states to cul­ti­vate indus­tri­al hemp and there’s prob­a­bly a way to make med­ical extracts from it. We need to start this research here in Iowa.

Final­ly, a lot of folks would like to expand the list of con­di­tions that cannabis extract can be used to treat.

If we could accom­plish any or all of these goals in 2015, we would be well on the way to reform­ing the image and rep­u­ta­tion of mar­i­jua­na in Iowa as good for some­thing instead of good for noth­ing.